LinkBack URL
About LinkBacks
Reply With Quote
It really depends on your level of OS and software knowledge, expectations and what you're willing to accept. I ran one of those as my car computer for a couple years for the same reason you state "I got a great deal." BUT, my needs quickly exceeded its capabilities. I now have a pair of them that my kids use for wireless surfing around the house and yard.Originally Posted by showson1
3400s are a pain in the *** to load XP onto (and most front-end nowadays require it.) A few will run on Win98, but the tradeoff is you will have to manually install all your drivers and addons and some just flat won't work. Many will require experimentation (trial and error) to impliment because Win98 drivers are becoming scarce and few are up to date. XP at least make these issues plug and play for the most part but eats up considerable resources.
If you're used to running a 2-3Ghz machine at home with DSL or Cable internet and expect the same from this tablet you will be severely disappointed by its performance. Even with my 3500, patience is a virtue. Many frontends, navigation, and video programs are graphics intensive and your graphics capability is almost 10 years old. Expect page changes to be slow (3-5 seconds without transitions); expect nav programs to be jerky in motion, and don't expect to be able to watch videos if anything else is running in the background; expect your internet usage to resemble 28.8 modem speed. You can forget about listening to MP3s while the nav is running and think you're gonna dowload weather data - the cpu/memory/graphics just can't handle it. Expect to have to compromise all the time. I ran my 3400 for almost a year with the cpu usage either maxed out or ranging from 87% to 100% compromising every aspect of my frontend and addons to keep it from locking up.
If you're willing to accept its shortcomings, i.e., poor glare reduction and daylight visiblility, having to us your fingernail or a pen on the touchscreen instead of your thumb, mic only audio in, 1.1 USB, and the above stated issues, you'll find that its not a bad starter system. Don't get me wrong, I've had my 3500s for almost 5 years now and am just this year campaigning some of the major manufacturers to build tablets condusive to the carpc environment. I have accepted the tradeoffs associated with my tablet because I would rather dock it in any of my three cars and at home and not have to worry about separate systems. I have accepted its idiocycracies because I'd rather remove it from the car with a flick of a switch than have to hide an internal/OEM install (my systems never get stolen cause they're not there.) I don't expect it to rival a 3Ghz desktop motherboard because I can't take that motherboard into my hotel room, fishing at the lake, or the beach in Waikiki and keep surfing. I accept the compromise of having to wait for graphics to load cause in the classroom I can rotate the screen and write my lecture notes in cursive while the tablet transcribes my handwriting into text on the fly. I accept the fact that the ground loop generated from its egg (power supply) is a noisy SOB and required extrordinary measure to eliminate because I have instant on for short stops and set my system up to shut off the screen 1min after ignition shutoff, then standby at 30min, then hibernate in 2 hours.
I could go on and on but I 'll stop this rant here. If you still want to continue with this venture, I'll help if I can. Just remember be patient, keep your expectations reasonable, be willing to compromise, and be ready to spend significant time tweaking to get every ounce of performance out of this system to meet your needs.
Good luck,
Giz
Bookmarks